The Aquariums of Pyongyang (23 page)

Prior to our relatives' visit, we had been wearing the clothes the security agents had given us upon leaving the camp. The departing prisoners were all given the same clothes. While slightly more presentable than the camp uniforms, they all shared the same cut, which lacked every hint of elegance and made us look every bit like former prisoners. Thanks to our relatives, who came bearing gifts of Japanese clothes and underwear, we were instantly transformed from paupers into rich people. My uncle and my two aunts stayed with us for almost a week and did everything in their power to brighten our spirits. And boy, did we ever need it!

The peasants with whom we worked had little sympathy for our plight. As far as they were concerned, former counterrevolutionary prisoners were by definition bad, shady people. They knew about Yodok, of course, just as every North Korean knows about the country's network of camps. What people don't know is the number of camps there are, how many people they hold, or what happens to people when they get there. But most North Koreans share an exceptional innocence and honesty; in time, these peasants realized our incarceration didn't necessarily mean we were bad people. As the distance between us lessened, gradually we were able to share parts of our story with them, though the details remained vague, for the sake of everyone's safety. By the end, I think they actually came to like us and feel genuine compassion for our fate.

Days on the collective farm began with a general assembly, which provided us with our daily ration of political manna. The Party secretary who ran the meetings was usually content to rehash one of Kim Il-sung's recent addresses or to read an editorial from
Rodong Sinmun
, but when excited about some recent event, he could drone on for as long as an hour and a half. A Party cadre then took roll call before sending us off to get our work assignment from the office of management. During wintertime, most agricultural workers were shifted to indoor maintenance work. North Korean peasants don't know the meaning of vacation. They work so hard for their measly compensation, which sometimes isn't even paid out in real money but rather in ration tickets. Until 1990, these tickets could be redeemed practically anywhere, but they have since lost all value in many parts of the country.

Thanks to my uncle and to the countless gifts he distributed, my family was soon moved to a small town near the district's industrial center. We lived there from 1987 to 1990, exchanging exhausting agricultural work for less taxing jobs in shops and factories. Leaving the farm also saved us from being classified as peasants, a caste to which my family otherwise would have been condemned forever. In North Korea, the children of peasants are destined to remain peasants. They are systematically prevented from climbing the social ladder and can only advance by joining the army or by greasing a lot of palms—an option that presupposes having connections abroad. In the past, peasants could also pull themselves out of the underclass by marrying a city dweller, but the laws were changed in 1988. A marriage between a peasant and a city dweller now means social regression for the latter, who has no choice but to move to the country.

O
ur release from the camp did little to improve my father's health. He had been sick for a long time, having let an ulcer condition go untreated when we were still in Pyongyang. Once in Yodok, an operation was out of the question. Truth be told, given the state of hospitals in North Korea, I'm not sure he would have come out of it alive anyway. The good side, if it can be put that way, was that at Yodok his poor health and fragile constitution saved him from being assigned to hard-labor details. He also was fortunate to have good hands and was a competent addition to the woodworking shop. My father was a calm, taciturn man who resigned to fate without protest. Like Mi-ho, his greatest asset in life was probably his ability to draw no attention to himself. In all our time in Yodok, he was never once approached to work as a snitch. The ten years he spent in the camp were lost years, no question about it—full of hardship and longing for his wife—but they were also strangely peaceful. Yet
his lot had been too much to endure. His extinguished artistic dreams, the absence of his wife, the years spent making stools and broomsticks: it was all so much pain and suffering—and for what?

His illness worsened at the end of November 1987. The pain was not as acute as it had been on several earlier occasions, but he was now bedridden. I remember his last day. He was lying calmly in bed with his eyes closed, when his whole body suddenly went slack. He made a little gesture with his hand, smiling slightly—what I later realized was his final farewell. That's how he died, without our even realizing it. That scene changed my perception of death. Previously, it always wore a mask of terror; I never imagined it could be so peaceful. Since then, death no longer scares me. My father showed me it could be a moment for smiling.

For the next two days, we sat watch over my father's body, in accordance with Korean tradition. Family and friends gathered to drink, eat noodles and play cards; neighbors dropped by to help with all the preparations; and the North Korean state gave us an allotment for thirty liters of alcohol, as was its wont on the occasion of a citizen's death. With the aid of some bribery, the thirty liters became a hundred liters, a volume approaching what was needed for a proper funeral. I buried my father up in the mountains, in a spot with a beautiful view. Koreans believe that a well-chosen burial site brings prosperity to the descendants of the deceased. I sometimes think this might account for all the good luck I have had since.

My father died without ever seeing my mother again. It didn't have to be that way. Though our movement was restricted, she was free to apply for a travel permit to come visit us. The real obstacle was that we didn't know were she was. In the West, such information can be had by consulting a phone book, checking with the police,
or placing an advertisement in a newspaper. In North Korea, these options aren't available. Ultimately, it was luck that brought us together. My mother's youngest sister, who lived in Nampo, met an ex-prisoner from Yodok who kept in touch with a number of his old campmates, some of whom knew our whereabouts. Through them, we got our aunt's address. But this stroke of luck only made me realize how unready I was for a reunion. While I wanted very much to see my mother, I still had lingering doubts—kept alive largely by my grandmother—about the circumstances under which she had gotten the divorce. My father, influenced perhaps by his mother's unflattering insinuations, hadn't made any inquiries among former acquaintances who might put him in touch with his wife. Were there other reasons why I hesitated to see my mother? For the last ten years, Grandmother had raised us, supported us, protected us. We had become her children. Did I suspect she feared that a reunion with our mother would cause her to lose us? Whatever the reason, I didn't use the address until after my grandmother's death in 1989.

Two years after our release, Grandmother was still in good health. She stayed at home mostly, sometimes doing light fieldwork, such as weeding and gathering food for the rabbits. The start of the summer of 1989 was extremely hot. One day—June 25, to be exact—Grandmother and I had a stupid argument about what she had made me for lunch. Later regretting the way I had acted, I resolved to come home early to offer my apologies, but when I arrived, I found the house empty. Then the neighbors came running over to tell me Grandmother had fallen in the middle of a field. I ran as fast as I could only to find her lying there motionless. We carried her back to the house, but alas, she had stopped breathing. She had mostly likely died of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was a terrible
blow to my sister and me. We had been so close. She was the link that kept the family pieces connected. Mi-ho and I were now alone. Later on, I missed her with less desperation. She had guarded much of her beauty until the age of sixty, but after one year in the camp, she was white-haired, wrinkled, and toothless. Her illnesses, too—the pellagra and an internal hemorrhage—had left their mark. But, proud daughter of Cheju, she had surmounted every test.

A few weeks after Grandmother's death, my sister and I wrote to Nampo for information about our mother, and in January 1990, we got permission to travel to Pyongyang, where we learned she was living. She tearfully recounted the events of the thirteen miserable years since our departure. Then it was our turn to tell what had become of us, while she sat there staring, mouth agape. She didn't interrupt us once, but neither did she venture a single word against the regime. Had her loyalty survived intact? All she could bring herself to say was, “You were so unlucky. That's fate. . . .” In the wake of our deportation to Yodok, she waited for her turn to come. She was sure she would soon be interrogated and sent to join us. But the security agents never showed up, and so, eventually, she went to them. She wanted permission to join us, but the agents knew how to discourage her. “Do you really want to be condemned?” they asked. “You know, we might also send away all your brothers and sisters and all their children.”

My mother thought she would never see us again. Instead of offering her a little hope, the agents assured her we would be staying at Yodok until our dying days. There was nothing else for her to do. She went home and unpacked all the food and clothing she planned to take on her trip. For a long time afterward, she lived alone, depressed and sick.

The little apartment she now occupied in central Pyongyang had one main room, a kitchen, and a little laundry room. Whenever we came to visit her, she would spend hours cooking us wonderful meals, delighted at the resumption of her motherly duties. For a time she considered leaving her apartment and moving closer to us, but I dissuaded her. She was so lucky to be living in Pyongyang and to be working for the People's Office of Services, the government department responsible for the distribution of consumable goods. I promised we would come visit as often as we could. During my sojourn in Yodok, I had been angry at her for not joining us. I hadn't understood her situation. I didn't know that having already separated my parents, the state could also force them to divorce. I hope my mother isn't angry with me now for having left the country, and I hope she understands me better than I understood her.

Life followed its course. A few months after grandmother's death, my sister and I moved to Pyungsung to live with my uncle, who got married shortly after. Mi-ho decided to enter nursing school. Now that we were out of the camp, I had a chance to get to know her again. At Yodok, our work duties had always kept us apart. While I was generally working outdoors, she spent all of her time at the camp's textile factory, only coming home for quick snatches of food and sleep. Only now that we were out did I realize how much she had changed. She was eighteen years old, and astoundingly beautiful. Back at the camp, the uniforms, the filth, and the prolonged malnutrition ensured that no one looked attractive. Once free, though, Mi-ho's beauty became impossible to overlook, and I was proud when smitten friends complimented me on her physical charm. She had many suitors—too many even for my taste. An officer of the Korean People's Army was especially persistent. He
seemed like a nice guy and he was remarkably strong physically. He once won a prize in a national competition in the Korean martial art of tae kwon do. To curry my favor, he often brought me rice and heating fuel that he stole from his barracks, which made me a bit weary. Looking back now, he actually was a rather odd character. As chauffeur to a division general, he systematically tried to run over dogs he saw on the street. The hobby proved to be his undoing. One day he skidded out of control while chasing a particularly fleetfooted dog and drove the general's car into a rice paddy. He got sentenced to a year in jail, and I never saw him again.

Truth be told, I enjoyed his conversation and missed him when he was gone. When I left Yodok, I also left all my friends. I later reestablished contact with several of them on the outside, but these relations were always rocky. That's how it was with one of my former Yodok teammates, who survived outside the camp on money sent by his sister from Japan. He was a rich man by North Korean standards, and his wealth gave him enormous power. Among other things, it enabled him to divorce the wife his father had arranged for him. Give a bureaucrat a “little gift” and he'll miraculously turn up all those files that have been lying in abeyance for months. My friend later used the same method to smooth over the legal questions that emerged from his beating his second wife, the fight he had with her new lover, and his second request for divorce. A little grease kept everything nice and quiet. That's the way things usually work in North Korea: money and violence stand in for law and order. We even have a saying for it: “The law is far; the fist is close.” The regime that never tires of denouncing capitalism has birthed a society where money is king—more so than any capitalist society I have visited. This was the saving grace for Koreans who made the mistake of moving back from Japan. Money was their only defense against the mistrust of their fellow
Koreans and the outright hostility of the police, who always suspected them of espionage and disturbing the public peace.